Judges politically motivated: lawyer

Tough NSW legislation aimed at keeping 10 notorious killers in jail until they die was unconstitutional because judges had been effectively ordered to do the bidding of the Government, the High Court heard yesterday.

Lawyer Bret Walker said a 1997 amendment to the Sentencing Act, which demanded special reasons had to exist for the men to be given a chance to apply for parole, had shut the door on any chance for release.

His client, Alan Walker, was sentenced to life in 1974 along with Kevin Crump for the murder of Ian Lamb and conspiring to murder mother-of-three Virginia Morse. The sentencing judge, Justice Taylor, said the horrific nature of the crime demanded that they die in jail. But after Crump's application for his sentence to be reviewed was granted in 1997 the Government ordered that when a judge said life should mean life, the offenders would only be eligible for parole after 30 years and only if they showed special reasons.

This also covered the killers of Anita Cobby and Janine Balding, whom judges had also said should never be released. In 2001 the Government passed another law which the Premier, Bob Carr, said would "cement them to their cells".

Mr Walker said "the policy of the Government was clearly announced . . . not to give Crump and these nine other animals any hope in the future".

"Parliament told the judges what Parliament and the community expected the judges to decide . . . that is what comprises the legislative intrusion into the exercise of the judicial power."

But as Mr Walker made his case before all seven judges of the court, the question of what would constitute special reasons emerged as a key issue.

The NSW Solicitor-General, Michael Sexton, agreed that helping police solve a crime, an illness such as Alzheimer's, or new facts would fall within the realms of special, and that the act still gave judges wide discretion.

Mr Sexton said that demanding special reasons was "no doubt a reasonably tough test . . . there may be questions as to its wisdom but it is quite different to questions about its validity".